WASHINGTON: For months during Bill Clinton’s administration , the White House lost the card with a set of numbers for opening the briefcase containing codes for a nuclear attack, a former military officer says.

Gen Hugh Shelton, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, said in his new memoir, “Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior”, that “the codes were actually missing for months. That’s a big deal — a gargantuan deal”, said The Telegraph newspaper.

A similar claim was made by Lt Col Robert Patterson, a former aide, in a book published seven years ago.